Personalized retargeter myThings, which saw an investment of $6 million from Deutsche Telcom's T-Venture in 2010 (AdExchanger Q&A), is adding a new telecom investor as Orange, Publicis and Iris Capital Management will leverage their very own investment fund to take part in a $15 million cash infusion into myThings. German telecom meet French telecom. myThings CEO Benny Arbel tells TechCrunch that "myThings is one of the top five buyers of RTB in Europe, personalizing some one billion banners every month." Orange also has deal with OpenX's exchange - first announced in 2010. And, ad holding company Publicis has a tight, ad tech relationship with Google. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Read the release.SingTel's recent purchase of mobile ad tech and services company Amobee makes sense here - telecom sees the writing on the wall for communication needs being overtaken by the Web and needs to find new business interests.

P&G's Digital Future

Forrester's Tracy Stokes looks at P&G's recent pronouncements around a shift to digital and improved efficiency. She sees something slightly different from P&G, "...the efficiency play is a red herring. Digital’s draw for P&G is to get closer to its consumers. P&G is a smart brand builder that is laser focused on understanding its consumers’ every need. At the [recent P&G] Signal event, Pritchard, declared that their focus 'is not on digital marketing; it’s about brand building in a digital world.' So it’s not about being digital, it’s about how digital technology can help them better build their brand with consumers." Read more.

Divining Ad Impact

From the company blog, Convertro's COO Armen Avedissian isn't a big believer in the cross platform measurement announcement for ads earlier in the week from Nielsen in partnership with GroupM. He sees creative as a trip wire, "Nielsen provides virtually no way to measure creative or its deterioration over time in real-time (or even for testing purposes). Typically, 50% of the performance comes from planning and strategy, and the other 50% from the power of the creative mix." Convertro has its own plans for cross-platform measurement. Read more.

DataXu Exec Moves

Is DataXu co-Founder and CRO taking a "European Vacation"? Not quite. DataXu announced that Journey will be moving into a new role of "Managing Director, International" as the company looks to expand outside the U.S. and help drive business for its Cologne-based Mexad acquisition in January. Read a bit more in MediaWeek UK. The company also announced that Salesforce.com sales exec Geoff Dodge will become the company's EVP of Sales and Marketing and "spearhead the next wave of DataXu’s expansion." Read the release.

Gamification

Expect more games with ads as marketers look for better stories around engagement. BlurbIQ, whose management has an online games background, says that Mojiva (AdExchanger Q&A) has become the first company to install BlurbIQ's "cross platform interactive video advertising solution for mobile." There's a connection here to the CAPTCHA crowd, too, as the release explains product features of "dynamic insertion of brand questions within video, [and] brand rankings to encourage replay and sharing." Read more.

Injecting Ads

"There are bad people on the Internet doing bad things with ads at the expense of honest publishers, and it really pisses me off." Harry Callahan? Almost - it's Walter Knapp from Lijit (acquired by Federated Media in October) and he points to the nefarious implementation of the ad injector browser plug-in: "These ads fit in the same slots as the normal ads they’re used to seeing, but this time it’s obnoxious teeth-whitening or belly-fat reduction ads. The ad injector has effectively stolen from publishers by using the browser plug-in to inject its own ads..." Needless to say, he wants the industry to stamp it out. Make his day.

Your Russian Sales Office

A new eMarketer graphic repurposes data from the Russian Association of Communication Agencies to reveal, "Online spending, which in 2010 grew 40% to RUB26.8 billion ($91.2 million), led all media with growth of 56% in 2011 to RUB41.8 billion ($1.42 billion). Online is now second to TV in ad spend in Russia. With companies like Yandex and others pumping funds into the Russian online economy, a continued 50% growth rate for the forseeable future seems possible. It may be even be low. But eMarketer isn't guessing. See it now.

Digital Share Grow-eth

Consulting and research firm BIA/Kelsey says, "Local online/interactive/digital advertising revenues will climb from $21.2 billion in 2011 to $38.5 billion by 2016 [in the U.S.], representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7 percent (this figure includes mobile)." Meanwhile overall spend will be flat. Read the release. Digital is taking more share.